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egin to do that. That’s the key, because the National Curriculum doesn’t, the message
isn’t so strong … I think a secondary teacher interested in, say, British history in the
19 th century … know that you can’t address political history in the 19 th century
without addressing the Irish Question, and the same I think is true for British history
for a lot of the twentieth century.
However, they felt that primary teachers were very receptive to change when it was possible
to work directly with them. The interviewee felt that this approach was reflected by the work
the Ireland in Schools project had undertaken with primary school teachers. Work related to
Grace O’Malley, which was based on a teacher’s collaboration with the Ireland in Schools
project, had been put on the QCA’s Innovating History website. The criticism, which this
topic aroused from the Daily Mail (Harris, 2004), has been considered in Chapter 6. The
support provided by QCA, and the fact that the Grace O’Malley material remained on their
site despite having received criticism in the national press, suggests that the interviewee and
the organisation were both willing and able to promote curriculum initiatives in the face of
overt attacks from the media.
The interviewee felt that at secondary level teachers had more confidence than primary
teachers in developing their schemes of work and were more likely to have the expertise to
develop an Irish dimension. However, they said that in order to help them QCA had
developed a Key Stage 3 scheme of work called ‘Divided Ireland: why has it been so hard to
achieve peace in Ireland?’ The unit was split into three key issues – ‘Why is the past so
important to some people in Ireland?’ ‘Why was Ireland partitioned?’ ‘Why were there
violent protests in Northern Ireland in 1968-9?’ The interviewee saw it as an adaptation to the
needs of Key Stage 3 of the approach used in the Modern World Study unit in the School
History Project. This naturally led to a discussion of the merits of the School History Project
course related to Modern Ireland at Key Stage 4. The interviewee considered that the way that